The Decibel - The violent incidents and menacing texts targeting waste giant GFL

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

For the last year and a half, the talk of construction sites and Bay Street was about a string of violent incidents targeting GFL, the waste management giant, and GIP, its sister construction company. There was suspected arson, vandalism, and executives’ homes were targeted in shootings in both 2024 and this past March. Earlier this month, police made an arrest in connection with the 2024 shootings: Ilan Philosophe, the founder of a competing company, Astro Excavating Inc. The Globe’s Robyn Doolittle and Tim Kiladze spent the last year and a half reporting on this, including hours speaking with Philosophe before his arrest. Today, they bring us the full story about the shootings, menacing and hostile text messages, and fights over lucrative construction contracts. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For the last year and a half, the talk of construction sites and Bay Street was about who was behind a string of violent incidents targeting a multi-billion dollar waste management and construction giant. Here's the globe's Robin Doolittle. Okay, so we are in Toronto's very expensive and posh, Rosdale neighborhood. It's just before midnight, about 1145, and a dark-colored sedan does a U-turn on one of the most expensive streets in Rosedale parks. A gunman gets out in a black shirt with white stripes on the front.

His face is obscured with a black mask. And he opens fire on this really huge mansion. There's a security guard there watching this whole thing. And as the gunman starts to leave, he shoots at least one shot towards the security guard. He gets back in the car. About an hour later, what appears to be the same man wearing the same sweater, pulls up to another huge house. in another very expensive Toronto neighborhood and opens fire on the front door.

And this time it seems that the gunman is filming the shooting. He's holding his cell phone and his left hand and the handgun in his other hand, gets in the car, speeds away. No one was injured in these incidents, but they, of course, really rattled the homeowners. Particularly in the second house, both of the occupants inside were awake. One was sitting downstairs, watching television, another was upstairs, and the front of their houses are pocked with bullet holes. And what we quickly learned is that the homes that were targeted were owned by executives tied to waste management giant GFL, one of the biggest waste management companies in North America.

That includes the CEO, Patrick DeViji, and his longtime business partner, Ted Manziaris. And it became pretty clear that these were not too random acts of violence. That's a Globe reporter Tim Kallads. He and Robin have spent the last year and a half reporting on the twists and turns of this story. These shootings are among a string of attacks on GFL that have occurred intermittently over the last two years. There's been suspected arsons and mischiefs and vandalisms and other shootings, including offices. And most recently, just at the end of March, two more executive's homes were hit. Shootings of any sort at a home would spook a neighborhood, so there's a public safety concern.

You know, there have been multiple shooting incidents across the GTA, so the public was scared. On top of that, GFL is a big public company. It's an industrial powerhouse here in Canada, and is very rare to have these types of incidents associated with a reputable name. And what we now know through police documents is that within hours of these two shootings, police began suspecting that this might have something to do with an increasingly bitter feud between GFL and a local Toronto excavating insuring company called Astro. Tim and Robin also spent hours talking to the head of Astro for their investigation. And why we've all come back to this again now is because a week and a half ago, the founder of Astro was charged in connection with the September 2024 shootings. He has not been charged in connection to any other violence.

This story encapsulates a lot of drama. The shootings in 2024 and just a few weeks ago, menacing texts, and the cutthroat nature of lucrative construction contracts. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Robin, Tim, thanks so much for joining me today. Happy to be here. So there are a lot of moving parts in this story.

So let's set out who is involved. Tim, you were covering the business side of the story. So let's start with the company at the center of this. So it's GFL and have been covering them for many years. It used to be known as Green for Life and then became GFL environmental. and they're a big Canadian company. They service hundreds of municipalities in Canada and the U.S. And what they mainly do is municipal waste.

So they pick up your trash and recycling. The company was founded in 2007 by Patrick DeViji. And initially, it was a smaller scale operation located in the GTA, did not have big name recognition, but it's grown to be worth about $20 billion on the Toronto Stock Exchange. And on top of that, the CEO, Patrick DeVigi, is also one of Canada's highest paid CEOs making in a recent year $68.5 million. And there's been a number of things over time that have kind of put them on the map and helped them grow. One of them was about 15 years ago, they landed the contract for a municipal waste in the city of Toronto.

It hasn't just been that they've won some big contracts like Toronto. They aggressively expanded and they were not apologetic about it. If anything, they actually openly said, we're here to scoop up as much as possible. They would basically buy anything they could get their hands on. And then around 2021, 2021, 2022, they see a new market opportunity, and that's to expand into infrastructure. They bought a company called Coco Paving, which is big in Ontario. And they create a new company called GIP or green infrastructure partners. Okay.

So I think a lot of us probably have heard of GFL or seen their bright green trucks picking up our trash. if you live in cities like Toronto, Edmonton or Halifax. How powerful is this company? It's the biggest one in Canada in these fields, and it's the fourth largest in North America. They've really moved up to this upper echelon of large waste management companies. And when you do that, you just attract much more investor attention. You're not seen as this little guy, those little rump on the side that maybe people should pay attention to. They are in the game.

Okay. So you mentioned this other company, Green Infrastructure Partners, or, GIP, which we know about GIP? They've really made a mark, and some of it is beautiful marketing. If you're in the GTA and some other select regions, you can't help but notice them. They'll be on the sides of highways because there's so much construction going on right now. Another big element is that they were heavy into helping with the kind of condo boom and real estate construction boom.

So they were always seen at job sites, digging holes, doing stuff with soil, and they became a competitor to Astro because of the company. of this. And that's where the two kind of come to a head. Okay. You mentioned Astro. So let's bring in Astro. This is the other main company in the story. Robin, tell me about Astro. So by contrast, Astro is a much smaller operation. It was founded in 2014. It started out as an excavating company. So excavating is digging the hole. And then it expanded into shoring. And shoring is kind of what's holding up the walls around the hole. In the last, you know, decade or so that's been around, it's done more than 100 excavations.

it really carved out a niche, especially in high-rise commercial, residential. It's been expanding more into kind of civil and infrastructure. But by contrast, a much, much smaller operation than GFL. Okay. So, Robin, you were focused on the police investigation side of this story. And that brings us to Astro's founder, Elon Filosoff. Tell me about him. Okay.

So Tim and I have been following this and reporting on the acts of violence and the police investigations as they've been going. And about a year ago, I got a tip that police had made a jump in their investigation, that they were either close to or had made an arrest in connection to what was happening with GFL. So do some reporting, make some calls, and focus in on someone named Elon Philosoph. And this is the owner of Astro Excavating in Toronto. So then I do a little bit more digging and I'm trying to reach out to him. And I, you know, do a property search and find an address connected to him. And then I head out to his house and, you know, asked him for comment on this tip that I'd heard. So the first thing he does as we sit down is he explains that this is, so this is April 2025.

This is a year ago. He has been criminally charged. He's been criminally charged with sending harassing text messages to GIP officials. But he has not been charged in connection to any of the violence. And again, this is going back a year ago. Essentially, he's saying, I'm being blamed for this when I have nothing to do with it. And I want to be an open book and tell you everything. And this started what became a series of conversations that we've had with Elon over the last year.

What was your impression of him? I remember the first time when I met him. There's three pieces of art in his living room. And one is this giant sort of heavy contrast black and white photo of a excavator in a dig site. And there's another sort of pop art collage of him with machinery and Astro's logo and, you know, from nothing to something. And then another is a, you know, a two or three foot lifelike model of an excavator. Like this guy is extremely passionate about his business and this penthouse that he's living in. it's also the head office for Astro.

It's where he does all of the work. Like Astro is his life. That was my big takeaway. He was pretty soft-spoken, but spoke very passionately about his work, his company that he's built, and also his frustration in what he felt was this kind of relentless campaign by GFL to bully him, which GFL, by the way, denies. And I should also note he says GFL and GIP interchangeably, but the company that he's interacting with the most is GIP. They are the ones that have the competition in the in the market. Okay. Thanks for that

clarification. So what has the relationship between Astro and GIP been like, Robin? So three years ago, it was pretty good, actually. He had, you know, close business relationships with many of the most senior executives just through the industry. He actually used GFL facilities to remediate some of the soil. You know, they're competitors, but they're totally collegial. And, socially, he knew many of them through the industry. And then things changed in October 2023. Okay, yeah. Tell me how things went sour. What happened? So Astro had a contract to do a condo development by a developer named Marlon Springs development. And somewhere along the line, questions came up about the ground conditions. And what we also know through our reporting is that

at some point the developer became worried that Astro was not going to be able to handle the complicated ground conditions, as it is a smaller operation. And they had conversations with GIP about whether they could handle the work. In the end, Astro did keep the contract and executed it perfectly well. However, Elon felt completely betrayed. He thought that GIP was basically going behind his back to try to steal this contract. He also blamed this individual whom he'd hired to run Astro Shoring, Graham Smart. He thought that this was part of the reason that the developer had doubts. And he ended up firing Graham Smart shortly after this dustup with Marlin Springs in October

2023. And then a couple of months after that, Graham Smart went and took a senior position at GIP, which, as you can imagine, just fueled this even further. Just for the record, we reached out to GFL and GIP about this. And they completely deny that they try to steal the contract. They said it's ultimately the customer that issues tenders and is responsible for selecting a vendor of their choice based on price and qualifications. And they noted that Marlon Springs had actually been a client of theirs for about 20 years. So then what happens next in the relationship between Astro and GIP?

Okay. So this is another big point here. So here we are now. It's early 2024. Elon says that Astro Excavating is really taking off. They're getting more and more contracts. they're getting bigger clients. They've making their mark in the industry.

And he says that at this time, a individual named Sean Goldberg, who works at GIP, who he's collegial with, made a verbal offer to buy Astro, a nine-figure offer. And in his telling, he met with Sean and was polite,

but like, there's no way I'm selling my company. And he says that once he turned down this offer from GFL slash GIP, the company began retaliating against him. They started spreading, rumors about him in the industry, questioning his character, questioning Astro's work ethic. I will say, again, on this point, GFL and GIP is adamant that there was never an offer to buy Astro.

And in these months between October 2023 and early 2024, this relationship is unraveling. And as it's unraveling, Elon says he's becoming increasingly, increasingly frustrated at what he says is feel bullied by this Goliath in the industry. And he starts sending text messages to the individuals involved who he knows at GIP. And they become increasingly hostile, taunting, menacing. Okay, Tim, tell me about these texts. So be aware that these texts are graphic. They contain many expletives. And they go so far as to have homophobic slurs.

We're going to bleep this out. But just to get a flavor of what they are, could you please read some of them out? So some of them are taunting texts. And I'll give you an example here. It's a picture of Elon on a PJ or a private jet. And he writes, Merry Christmas, losers. Oh, shit, did it all with my own money, you fucking clowns. Oh, yeah.

And I own 100% of my company and 120 pieces of equipment with my own fucking money. Boss versus poxas. Ha ha ha ha. So here's another example. No financial engineering here, you saw fucking poxies. Just straight up gangst of business. zero debt in life like a real boss, I will never let you

be asleep. Oh yeah, I own 100% of my company two who shot you. And then there are seven emojis. And while there is a lot of vulgar language and expletives and things of that sort, the core theme throughout the messages is business talk.

And Mr. Philistoph takes a lot of issue with how GFL has built its business and the amount of debt that GFL has built up over time. What is Mr. Philosoph taking issue with? Why is he so focused on debt?

GFL essentially deployed a playbook where you take on some money from private equity and you go out and you buy as much as you can and you do it with a lot of debt. Because there is so much debt, you have high interest expenses. Just the same way with a house, you know, you buy a house with a big mortgage. You're going to pay a lot in interest over the life of that mortgage. because the interest expense is so high, GFL rarely makes money. There had been many, many years of annual losses. And so Elon is kind of countering this with how he has built his own company.

He says, I did this all myself. And the thing is, he was actually echoing what a lot of investors in GFL were saying at the time. GFL's shares, kind of late 2023, early 2024, started five, finally suffering after many years of strong gains because investors said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, now it's too much debt. And at that point, GFL had nearly $10 billion in debt. So it became an issue for the company, which is why they had to go out and try to find a way to solve the balance sheet or fix the balance sheet. That included selling one of its biggest divisions. Yeah, I think what was clear in the conversations we're having with Elon and reading these text messages is that Elon has a tremendous amount of pride in the way that he is built Astro.

And he really looks down on the way that GFL has grown and the strategies that it's used to grow. And this just has really fueled his anger at this feeling of being bullied by this company that he thinks has become such a Goliath kind of through unethical means. So we learned about this information through these text messages. How do we know about these texts? Some were text messages that Elon himself volunteered in interviews as part of his, you know, I want to. to be an open book. Some are from additional sources. But many of the most contentious ones are text messages that were included in a search warrant application. This is the search warrant application that police filed before they charged Elon with criminal harassment back in 2025.

And what we found when we finally got our hands on this document was that actually police had been considering him a suspect for the shootings. After the break, what Robin and Tim learned from the police documents. So Robin, tell me about this police document that you got a hold of. So this is an ITO, an information to obtain, the search warrant application. Basically, before police come into your house and take your stuff, they have to convince a judge that they have a right to do this. And getting that approval requires them to put together an ITO.

In that document, police lay out the evidence that they have. so far against you. So we knew that in April 2025, before Elon was charged with criminal harassment over the text messages, that police raided his home, that they took a bunch of his cell phones and computers. He talked about this in the first conversation. And when we're going through the document, what became very clear is that police were absolutely considering Elon Philosoph to be a suspect in the shootings. So what do we learn from these police documents? Well, before I start, I think just really underscore here with these ITOs, none of the evidence has been tested in court. And the target of the ITO, so Elon Philosoph in this case, is not aware that it's being filed.

They have no opportunity to defend themselves against it. So I just really want to underscore that these are untested allegations. But what we learn from the documents is that within hours of the September 2024 shooting, a GIP official told police. police that they'd been having problems with the head of Astro excavating for about a year. The text messages come up in this conversation. They also discussed with police an incident at a job site on September 6th. This is just a couple of weeks before the shootings on the executives home. There's a dispute.

Astro is hired to do some work there. The police end up getting called. And it's alleged that Elon is very upset. And we actually obtained court records connected to this that alleged he was erratic and swearing. And this is significant in the terms of the ITO for two reasons. One is police look at the report that was filed at the time to get some cell phone information for Elon that forms part of the investigation. The other, just in terms of what's going on in the background here in the industry, is GIP took over the contract because Astro was fired after this September. six incident. On the cell phone front, this is significant, but it's complicated. So I'm going to try

to explain it as simply as possible. Stay with me here. Elon has a number of cell phones. One, that a GIP official links to him starts with 437. In short, what police say in this document is that this 437 number received suspicious messages around the time of two of the attacks. There's a lot of caveats here. There's nothing in the document that shows what the messages are or whether the person sending them is linked to the actual incidents of violence. And we also don't know definitively if police have proven that he's actually the owner of this 437 number. But this is a piece of evidence that is included in the document. We also learned from this document that there was an additional incident at one of the executive's homes about a week before the shooting where another massed assailant.

came to the house and smashed the windows and the ring camera. Okay, so Robin, you get a ton of new information from this document, and this is submitted around the time Elon Philosoph is charged with criminal harassment in April 2025. Tim, what has GFL and the execs said about all these incidents involving them and their properties? So initially, they tried to downplay it. At the time that the shootings in September of 2024, 24, happened, Patrick DeVigi, the CEO of GFL, tried to say that the incident at his house was actually an attempted break and enter, which we quickly realized wasn't the case.

But because of GFL's business model and the industry it's in, which is waste management, he from the top, acknowledged that context, and he said, this is not the Sopranos. And for those who don't know, the Sopranos is a famous HBO show about a mafia boss in New Jersey and his family business is waste management. But the issue would not go away. And because GFEL is a big public company and it was in the middle of a transaction, he had to address it in a public video

and also on the next investor quarterly conference call, which is very rare for a public company to have to do. They do not want to have these headlines around their business. So that was November 2024. Since then they've gone quiet. They've been cooperating with police and they've been trying to charge ahead and treat it like business as usual.

Okay, Robin, let's fast forward to this year. What's been going on? Okay, so some of the attacks on GFL, GIP have been continuing in the background, although they seem to really die out. Tim and I are tracking Elon's case as it moves through the courts, this criminal harassment case. And now we're veering into March, 2026. And this is when things suddenly pick up again. We are hearing that the Crown is going to. to withdraw the criminal harassment charges related to the text messages against Elon. Elon's lawyer says that there was a promise that if there are no further incidents, they will be withdrawn in in 2027. But at the same time, two more executives' homes with GIP get hit by gunfire. The first is Sean Goldberg. He was the one that Elon alleges made the verbal offer for GIP to purchase Astro. The other individual is that. is Paul Borrelli, who is another long-time business associate of Patrick DeVigi, the CEO of GFL, and he is also with GIP.

So you have two more executives' homes that are hit by gunfire. We also know that a GFL office in North Toronto was also hit twice in March with gunfire. The front windows were shot out. What appears to have happened is that the most recent shootings reinvigorated the police investigation. And a week and a half ago, the Toronto Police Guns and Gangs Unit moved in and arrested Elon Philosoph. This time, they charged him in connection to those shootings in September 2024. What was Elon charged with? Philosoph was charged with two counts of firearms offenses and two counts of conspiracy to commit an indictable offense.

These charges only relate to the first two shootings on executives' homes in September 2024. for. Robin, how does Elon Philosoph respond to all of this? Like, what does he say? So we haven't spoken with Elon since he was arrested. He was put into custody. He actually was granted bail on Tuesday. But throughout the interviews that we've had with him, he's been very categorical that he absolutely has nothing to do with the violence that has been targeting GFL. He acknowledges that he's been sending the text messages. He expresses a lot of regret around them. He says, you know, he has pain inside of him and he could be rude sometimes, but he's done work on himself. Through his lawyer, we did get a statement from his lawyer and she on his half denies involvement in the shootings

and says that they are planning a vigorous defense. So what's the latest update on this case? So he appeared in bail court on Tuesday and there was a hearing. The details of what went on in court are covered by a publication ban. But what I can tell you is that to relatives pledged a combined $800,000 to secure his release. He is now under house arrest with a number of strict conditions, including that he's not allowed to contact anyone that he knows who works for GFL and he can't possess any weapons. Okay, so what about GFL then? Where do they stand? Well, GFL is trying to treat it as if they're just charging ahead. And they are. Just days after the arrest and charges in connection to the September of 2024 shootings were laid, they announced

a major deal to buy Calgary-based secure waste for $5.4 billion. It's one of their biggest deals yet. So they are really kind of putting their foot out there and saying we are not stopping. Okay, Tim, Robin, that was quite the tale that you told. Thank you so much for coming on the show and telling us what you learned. Thanks for having us. Thank you. That was Robin Doolittle, the Globe's Deputy Editor of Investigations.

and Tim Kallads, a financial reporter and columnist for the globe. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our associate producer and intern is Emily Conahan. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin and Mihal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.